The present invention generally provides methods and systems for facilitating the identification of audio files. More specifically, the present invention provides methods and systems that facilitate the search and retrieval of audio files, such as music files, from both paid providers of audio content as well as available freely on the Internet.
A number of techniques are known to those of skill in the art for delivering audio content to users. Providers of audio content maintain the audio content in one or more data stores and maintain detailed information that describes the audio content. For example, Apple Computer, Inc. provides the iTunes Music Store that allows users to browse structured information regarding items of audio content, as well as identify individual items of audio content for purchase and download. Similarly, in exchange for a subscription fee, the Yahoo! Music Engine provides uses with access to a library of structured information regarding items of audio content for browsing and selection of items of audio content for playback, which may include the purchase of items of audio content. Commercial providers of audio content are limited, however, in that each provider is limited to allowing users to search only over a given provider's library of audio content items, without any indication of when items unavailable in a given provider's library are available from an alternative provider. Additionally, audio content providers do not utilize unstructured items of audio content, as well as unstructured information regarding the same, available on the Internet.
In addition to audio content made available for purchase or download from commercial providers of audio content, users may download audio files from servers connected to the Internet. For example, a user may navigate to a given web site that is hosting audio content and select a given item of audio content for download to a local data store for playback. Although the audio content and related information made available on servers connected to a network such as the Internet is unstructured, users may employ general search engines, such as Yahoo! Search, to perform keyword searches through content that the search engine indexes to identify items of audio content. The search engine returns a result set comprising one or more links to files that contain the one or more keywords in the users search, which may, but not necessarily, include audio content. Using a search engine in this manner, however, fails to search across the universe of structured information regarding items of audio content that providers of audio content maintain. Furthermore, there is no targeting of the result set specifically to items of audio content and related information, and the search engine fails to provide for ranking of a result set of a search according to a ranking algorithm chosen dynamically.
In order to overcome shortcomings and problems associated with existing apparatuses and techniques for searching for and retrieving audio content, embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for searching both structured and unstructured audio content, including information regarding the same, improving the ranking of searches for audio content, and optimizing search result sets to provide users with access to preferred providers of audio content.